Weaving Cotton Transistors For Wearable Computing

There's a lot of interesting research going on right now in the world of conductive fabrics - basically, working towards the goal of clothing that can be lined with sensors and computers for a variety of tasks.

Now, Physorg is reporting that this group has successfully interweaved the conductive copper fibers into cotton cloth - which is a big step over current wearable computers, which attach sensors or other equipment to already completed fabrics.

The cotton fibers are made conductive by coating the fibers, first with gold nanoparticles, and then with a thin layer of PEDOT. PEDOT is a conductive polymer that's commonly used to "anti-foul" electrodes - that is, it prevents bacteria and other types of organic materials from accumulating in places where they shouldn't.

In the near term, the most likely application for these cotton fibers is for use as sensors - relaying different kinds of information about temperature and other things you might want to know about the person wearing them. In the long-term, though, the researchers hope to create simple, easy to use computers out of simple fabrics.

As one of the researchers, Juan Hinestroza told Physorg, "Perhaps one day we can even build computers out of cotton fibers in a similar way as khipus -a recording device based on knots and used by the Inca empire in Peru."